Humans vs. Zombies was directed by Brian T. Jaynes and written by both him and Devan Sagliani. It’s a tribute to the fans of zombies who have played Humans Versus Zombies on campuses across the United States using Nerf guns and other homemade ‘fun’ defensive weapons. The game itself is a fun concept and puts us in a good frame of mind for people who may think they are ready for a zombie outbreak – even when they are nowhere near prepared.
While the film itself doesn’t have the most rock solid of plots or tension building it is a fun watch. I’d recommend watching it with friends so you can get some group effort going to appreciate the humor and mistakes people make as its easily a film that’s more fun to watch with a group of friends instead of by yourself. The film itself shows that the zombie apocalypse in this world comes from a strain of H1N1 and gives us a group of geeks and one jock who have ‘knowledge’ on how to deal with the undead from their years of being drowned in pop culture that has to do with zombies. Throw in a love story between an unlikely couple and you almost have a teen smash hit movie! Just without the teens or hit.
I’m really not saying the movie was ‘bad’ just that it could have been a lot better. Also the introduction to the film could have been much shorter. I LOVED the concept of the movie itself. It was a great lead in to why people think they can survive a zombie outbreak and really have no right to be anywhere but zombie chow or hiding somewhere. The film itself takes the first half to let us know about the characters and the ZVH game that is such a hit on campus. Honestly if they had cut out the getting to know about the characters and got us to the second half of the film quicker it would have worked much better. Honestly I loved the HVZ game theme and mixing that in but I really could have cared less about the characters when we finally got to the second half of the movie (also known as when the zombie outbreak actually hit.)
When zombies actually hit we get to see that the special effects are actually decent. The fight scenes that occur are fun to watch and the actors are great to ridicule. Not all of them mind you but some of them use defensive or offensive ideas that were clearly from the comic books or video games that they love with zombies. The problem is fantasy and ‘reality’ don’t quite mash up as they try to use completely ridiculous ideas to stay alive. Fortunately most of the people that follow fantasy don’t survive.
The end of the film itself I also felt didn’t quite fit. It was rather abrupt it how it came to a close. I won’t spoil it for you but I felt that it wasn’t needed and didn’t fit with the close of the film. Possibly if I cared more about the characters or felt that they had a good way to close the film the way they did it would have worked. Sadly though when the end credits rolled you will probably be a little annoyed having the end of the film fall a bit flat and feel as if it was an afterthought to what it looked like they were building to.
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